[Arnold_Snyder]

First, in my earlier post, I forgot to thank Mason for inviting me to participate in this discussion.

Second, I think BigA/K is right about his point on the prize money chop. In my rebuy chapter, I go to great lengths to discuss the value of extra chips, even in a coin flip, where obviously luck rules. So, even though most fast tournaments are reduced to luck fests by the end, when a chop occurs, BigA/K is right that I did not give sufficient consideration to the value of chips. His point is a money-maker and I thank him for it. My advice would make sense for a player on a tight bankroll who was very concerned with avoiding fluctuations, but for most players who are in tournaments that they can well afford, my chopping advice is too conservative.

For anyone who might be struggling with BigA/K’s and Worldclass’s points, versus Mason’s concerns, I wanted to give any players in doubt more of a handle on why optimal tournament strategy is based on various aspects of tournament structure (or speed). I think a good way to do that is to return to the football game Harrington uses in explaining M and his zone system (p 124, HOHII), where the coach starts out with a lot of time and the full range of his plays and strategies available to him. Harrington explains that, as the clock winds down, and especially if the score is close or his team is behind, many of his strategic options are no longer viable. The coach cannot launch an attack of short runs because he doesn’t have the time luxury any more.

In football, there is a fixed game structure, so there is no such thing as a “fast” game structure. But imagine what would happen if a coach assumed he was playing the normal football game structure, only to find out 7 or 8 minutes into the game that there was only going to be one quarter. If the opposing team had gotten ahead of his team by a single touchdown in those first 7 or 8 minutes, his team would now be on the ropes. Overall, the coach would likely regret much time wasted up to this point on a running game.

A player in a fast tournament whose M is in Harrington’s green zone at the start, and who plays according to slow tournament green zone strategies, will similarly find himself suddenly out of time, just as if he were in a football game that he suddenly discovered had only one quarter of play.

Let me show how this relates to a real life fast tournament.

Every Friday night the Orleans has a single rebuy tournament with a $60 buy-in for $500 in chips, $5 more for $125 in dealer bonus chips, and $40 for $1000 in rebuy chips. You can make the rebuy any time in the first hour regardless of the size of your chip stack. Obviously, with the rebuy chips costing 50% less than the initial buy-in for double the amount of chips, any intelligent player will make the rebuy. This is essentially a $105 tourney where players start with $1625 in chips.

Here’s the early blind structure: Level 1: $10-$15; Level 2: $10-$20; Level 3: $15-$30; Level 4: $20-$40; Level 5: $30-$60.

With $1625 in starting chips, and the big blind starting at $15, we start out with a stack equal to just over 108 big blinds. In terms of M, we’re starting at 65 M, very solidly in Harrington’s green zone. This is common in the fast tournaments I recommend. The Orleans Saturday night tourney, another excellent fast format, also starts with an M of 65. Both of these Orleans tourneys rate as “Skill level 4” tournaments in my book, and those I recommend most highly for my strategies are those with Skill Levels 3 and 4. If you haven’t read my book, then this will make no sense, but suffice it to say that I use a method of quantifying tournaments’ speed based on the blind structures, and I advise against playing in those tournaments that are too fast (Skill Levels 0, 1, and 2—because the M starts out too low), and I most highly recommend those that start with a higher M. In my book, I do not use the term “M,” but if you look at my recommendations and follow the math, you will see that the best tournaments for fast play have relatively gentle blind structures and start with a high M, their only drawback being the fast blind levels.

During the first hour, in this Friday night Orleans tourney, the blind levels will go up every 15 minutes. At the end of one hour, we will be entering blind level 5. Consider what would happen to our chip stack if we did not play a hand during the first hour. Assuming we have gone through the blinds three times, or about once every 20 minutes, we will have lost only about $125 paying the blinds, reducing our starting chip stack to $1500.

But what has happened to our M in this hour? With $1500 in chips, and the blinds now at $30-$60, our M—just from paying the blinds three times, never getting involved in a hand—has gone down from a healthy green 65 to 16.67, well into the yellow zone. Furthermore, if we go through the blinds just one more time at their new level, our M will immediately drop to less than 10, into the orange zone.

And, when you hit the orange zone, you will unfortunately be hitting it exactly at the same time that the majority of other players in the tournament begin to realize they’re in trouble. At the same time as you start speeding up your strategy (loosening your playing and calling requirements), they will be speeding up their strategy, and you will be forced into confrontations in which lucky cards rule.

Contrary to slow tournament theory, where there really is an optional “survival” period and there is an understandable logic to not risking involvement when your (and everyone else’s) M is high, in fast tournaments the single best time to take risks is during this stage of the tournament when all of your opponents are primarily concerned with survival. With a high M, you can afford the risks. If someone plays back at you, you usually know they have a good hand (unless it happens to be a player like me or Worldclass or BigA/K), and you can get out of the way cheaply if necessary. This is the easiest time to read players’ hands.

Regarding Mason’s concern about my “suicidal” basic strategy advice to call a standard raise from the button with any two cards, note that my book specifies (p 158) that this strategy is not advised if you only have 30 big blinds or less in your stack. With more than 30 big blinds, I’ve found this play to be very profitable. There are so many players in fast tournaments who give up the lead in betting if the flop does not hit them, or looks scary to them, or who can be driven out with a raise during their green zone period when they are not desperate for chips, that I have found this to be one of the most profitable steals to make. And, note that I say that every play, including those I consider to be basic strategy plays, should be adjusted for the actual opponent you are facing.

In a slower tournament, you have more time to wait for premium hands and situations if you choose to. Let’s assume the same $1625 in starting chips, and the exact same Orleans blind structure, but with 60-minute levels. Our assumption here is again that we will go through the blinds every 20 minutes. With this structure, our M again starts at 65, and if we sit for an hour without playing a hand, our M will have gone down from 65 to about 52—still well within the green zone—and if we sit for another 20 minutes without playing a hand, going through the blinds once more, our M would still be at about 51, still nowhere near the yellow zone, let alone the orange zone.

If you enter that Orleans Friday or Saturday night tournament feeling like you can sit back and wait for premium hands because you’ve got an M of 65, you’re like a coach assuming he’s got a full 60 minutes to play his running game. In reality, you don’t have time for that running game. You have to go with the passing game. If you start out waiting for premium hands in a fast tournament, the vast majority of the time you will not get the cards you need to make the money you need to keep up with the rising blinds, and you will be at the mercy of luck within the first 60-90 minutes.

And, at any time during a fast tournament when your chip stack enters what Harrington calls his green zone due to winning a big pot or two, you are making a mistake if you revert to playing as conservatively as he advises for his green zone strategy. You can be more selective than the desperate stacks, but you can never give up your aggression. Those blinds and antes will just keep moving up too fast.

I don’t want you to think that I am refuting anything that Harrington says in his book. He does not address fast blind structures in HOHII. I’m saying that for the M formula to be accurate for any tournament, it would have to include modifiers for blind structure and field size. (Your point, Mason, about the speed of play in the later stages of the WPT tournaments, is due to the increased field sizes we’re seeing these days. A few years back, when these tournaments had much smaller fields, their blind structures did not make the final tables such a crapshoot.)

To sum it up, to play according to M without an adjustment for tournament speed will put you in the position of a coach playing according to a normal football game structure when in fact he only has one quarter to win. Plays that would be suicidal in a slow format are simple basic strategy plays in a fast format. And, some of the easiest players to exploit with fast play are those who are playing as if the overall tournament speed didn’t matter.